Hi, Dan 

Thanks for reaching out to us

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1.  Making a "Cascading filter" selection for  a user, before loading the filtered result.

I am not sure at all if i understood exactly what your use-case is,  but if you need something like that,

it can be achieved with our premium add-on Powerful Filters.

You could hide the table and make the user select from one or more filters,  and with Cascade Filers ( dependant from left to right),

if a user selects a state > then only Cities from that State will appear on the next filter >

then if the user picks a City > Then it will only load the Zip codes of that city on the " Zip code" column filter;

and when they make all of the filter selections, you can set a "Submit selection" button,

then the table will only load with the filtered results.

Please check more on Powerful Filters here.

Before purchase, you can test all Powerful Filtering Add-on features on our sandbox site.

2. I then want the user to review the returned dataset, if correct, be able to submit the 'filters' for a full accurate quote (via email or submit to database).

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Not sure if i understood this part, but i will do my best to advise.

Do you need to save the selection of "which filters they chose" , or to save the resulting table from their filters, and then to get this sent from the user to you?

I will go for the second option - it seems to me that you need that.

1.  A simple solution ( requires work from the user) :

If you want users to do something like a simple "Export" of the filtered table result,

in that case, we have Table Tools with Export options available.

If you enable this in the Table settings, a user can be able to make the filter selection, and if they hit "export" as CSV, Excel,PDF, or "Copy";

then it would create a CSV/Excel/PDF file with only the filtered results,

but they also have to then manually send you an Email with this file.

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2. But if you wish a more "automated" , more elegant solution,

At this time, we don't have any built-in solution to achieve this, but you can suggest it to our developers - they will do their best to make a solution in the future.

Please feel free to search on our suggestions page, 

 to see if someone may be already suggested this feature. If you can't see it, feel free to add your suggestion there,  and as more people vote, the feature will move higher on the priority list.

You can certainly follow our changeLog page if you'd like ( it is also available in the plugin dashboard), where we state any changes/new features/bug fixes during updates;

and our newsletter, so you're informed about new features, bug fixes, freebies, etc.

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If you have coding skills and wish to try to make a custom solution now,

you can check out our available hooks for Developers on this documentation and see if you can find any hook that might help.

Please be advised that custom solutions with hooks are not included in our support.

You can also research resources such as Stack Overflow to see if any other user perhaps found a workaround.

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Just in case if you perhaps need to save the "filter selection",  I will additionally share a custom workaround that can do that.

this bit of custom js will update the browser url (without triggering a reload) to reflect what values have been entered in filters, thereby generating a direct link to the current 'view'. Note this only works for separate filter forms, but should only need a couple of tweaks to do a version for the simple in-table filter boxes ...

jQuery(window).load(function(){
  wpDataTables.table_1.addOnDrawCallback(function(){
    var params={};
    jQuery('.wpDataTableFilterSection').each(function(i, obj) {
      if ( inputbox = obj.id.match("table_1_(.+)_filter_sections") ) {
        if (jQuery(obj).find('input').val()) {
          var key='wdt_column_filter['+inputbox[1]+']';
          params[key] = jQuery(obj).find('input').val();
        }
      }
    }); 
    history.pushState('','','?'+jQuery.param(params));
  });
});

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I hope that this helps.

Please correct me if i misunderstood your goal. Thank you

Hi, Dan

I apologise - i did not answer your last question, as an alternative solution, you asked :

Alternatively, is there an easy way to read the wpdatatables filters (and a particular column returned) and insert them into a form for submission for a full quote?  

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If you wish to have an automated solution, to pull wpDataTable filters with a particular column returned and also automatically send this in a Form for submission;

something like that is not currently possible with any built-in capabilities of our plugin,

and i am not sure if or when it might be possible - but you can certainly make a suggestion for our developers, and we will consider working on a solution in the future.

Please feel free to search on our suggestions page, 

 to see if someone may be already suggested this feature. If you can't see it, feel free to add your suggestion there,  and as more people vote, the feature will move higher on the priority list.

You can certainly follow our changeLog page if you'd like ( it is also available in the plugin dashboard), where we state any changes/new features/bug fixes during updates;

and our newsletter, so you're informed about new features, bug fixes, freebies, etc.

-

If you have coding skills and wish to try to make a custom solution now,

you can check out our available hooks for Developers on this documentation and see if you can find any hook that might help.

Please be advised that custom solutions with hooks are not included in our support.

You can also research resources such as Stack Overflow to see if any other user perhaps found a workaround.

( We do like to give examples for certain solutions, but for this use-case, we, unfortunately, don't have anything yet)